User blog:Alevice/Wiki Adoption
You might wonder why would anyone care about such an abandoned wiki made for nowadays non-existent website? The truth is that I hold no regard for the site, I didn't even know about it. But I care deeply about strategy games, RTS is one of my favorite genres, and this abandoned wikia seems like an opportunity to write and learn about them. Originally I had intended to suggest Lindsay Fleay from RTS Carnage to rebuild the site from the ground into a more eslable engine, but to be honest my developer skills have not been honed in years and would have taken forever for such a thing. So the next best thing is to make a more communal effort into raising an acceptable succesor. Aims The goal I have for the site is to cover all RTS old and new, and whenever possible, go in detail about them - explain onto their general systems, strategy essentials, unique traits, hopefully even a degree of taxonomy and such. My inspirations in content and structure for the site are the charming and deep (for its era) Real Time Strategic Carnage , the classic battle.net strategy guides such as Mojo StormStout's , and the always insightful guides from Shoryuken's wiki . I dont expect such a task to be finished anytime soon, but hopefully prior to the end of the year this would have acceptably grown in terms of content. Particular short term goals *Remove references to the rstcommunity website. It doesnt exist anymore, and this wiki could benefit from being a bit more agnostic rather than marrying it to a given website. *If feasible, expand the wiki layout to utilize the most space possible. There will be probably tons to read and images to include alongside articles, and the current layout doesnt utilize efficiently wide screens. Considerations for mobile version should be taken into account. Its likely I will need to at least consult a dedicated web designer on this. *No elaborate fixed backgrounds. The aim isnt much for promoting any particular franchise, so any relatively small, tileable image that could server as a semi literal wallpaper and convey the strategy bits should suffice. *Genre/theme categories should include blurbs about particular series or standalone games, drawing inspiration from RTSC Grand RTS List . A proof of concept can be found in the still barebones World War 2 category (admittedly I should have used an "Ages of" Category as a better example considering that pages for the three big series in that format already exist (AoE, EE, RoN), but I couldn't think of a good name for such a category). Particular long term goals *Every game should have a Game Systems subpage, that should provide a general outline the particular mechanics and such from each game (eg. asymmetrical races on Starcraft, the specific on resource recollection/generation, Strategic Points and Squads on Dawn of War, formations on Homeworld, uniqute units on Age of Empires, etc). Similar in principle to the basics guide on the Warcraft 3 Strategy Guide *They also should have a Strategy subpage, to outline the essentials of the game strategies, while not necesseraly dig way too deep. Like for example, while a Starcraft 2 page wouldnt cover a page dedicated to the Terran Marine and its abilities and stats, a Terran Strategy section would mention the Marines role in army composition (like in Blobs and other things), and the pros and cons of certain upgrades and general teching options. An example could be the Shoryuken wiki's King of Fighters XIII strategy page , where it covers how the particular mechanics (like hops) come into play for planning out. More indepth professional guides and such should be linked to external sites, like TeamLiquid for Starcraft 2. *Custom content coverage. For games that support them, popular mods and campaigns should be at least mentioned and linked, as well as networking with actual modding sistes such as SC2Mapster , Age of Kings Heaven , etc. Interrelations with more dedicated sites Outside a very particular set of websites, I'm fully aware of my status as a nobody in the grand scheme of the RTS community. Sites such as the Wayward Strategist and reddits own /r/RealTimeStrategy (among possibly others), do already a great job on covering RTS games in general. Rather than pretend to supersede them and step on their toes, it remains on my interests to develop some relations with them and work alongside to develop a bigger network of RTS websites, and hopefully find ways to raise interest into the genre itself. In regards to sister genres coverage This is an interesting point. While my vision is to have am more inclusive rather than exclusive approach to coverage, genres like city simulations and mobas might not really belong to the genre, unless they include a degree of conflict and macromanagement into their mechanics. Games like Anno and Nuclear Dawn Dawn might belong, while DOTA and Heroes of the Storm might not. I dont have a final say in this topic yet, if a community grows I will leave it to discussion. Category:Blog posts